This invention relates generally to mailing envelopes, and more particularly to those used for transmitting a picture or other to-be-displayed text materials wherein the envelope also serves as a display frame for the material by the addressee.
Often, persons transmitting personal messages or mail include a picture or similar material for use by the addressee. For the most part, such pictures are examined initially by the addressee and are all too often casually stored in drawers and closets or even lost by the recipient. Mailing a common frame is both expensive an often results in breakage. Occasionally, the pictures are framed by the recipient and displayed. However, because frames tend to be expensive and because some time and effort are involved in selecting and purchasing a frame for such received pictures, there is little assurance to the sender that the picture once received will eventually find its way to a place of display by the recipient.
In addition to personal and private communications of pictures and similar materials, many uses such as advertising, commercial messages and other business uses as well as religious and political group communications involve pictorial material which is intended to be suitable for framing. Quite often such included material is intended to induce the recipient to more carefully examine the contents of the envelope than normally occurs by the recipients of such material.
The foregoing needs have led practitioners in the art to produce many devices which serve as mailing envelopes and display devices for pictures mailed therein. One such combination device is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 4,343,105 which shows a mailing envelope having front, back and side surfaces folded and configured to produce an envelope enclosure and a slot in the back portion thereof through which a tongue-like member extends in a downward direction to provide a support for the envelope when used as a display frame.
While this device and many of the other presently available combination envelope and display devices exist, many add weight, are expensive or difficult to use and most, if not all, are not conveniently reusable. There remains, therefore, a need in the art for a light-weight reusable combination envelope and display device which may be filled, addressed and sealed by the sender as easily and conveniently as a conventional envelope. The present invention fills the gap between a standard picture frame and the above-described mailing envelopes.